JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa barred the Dalai Lama from a peace conference in Johannesburg this week, saying Monday it did not want to endanger the government's relationship with China. The move prompted sharp criticism from the Nobel Committee, among others. Thabo Masebe, spokesman for President Kgalema Motlanthe, said now was not the time for such a high-profile visit from the Tibetan spiritual leader and added that South Africa hoped to avoid being "the source of negative publicity about China."
Instead the barring -- technically a refusal to issue an official invitation -- generated negative comments toward South Africa.
"It is disappointing that South Africa, which has received so much solidarity from the world, doesn't want to give that solidarity to others," Nobel Institute Director Geir Lundestad told The Associated Press in Oslo, referring to the decades-long fight against apartheid.
Retired Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former presidents F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela had issued invitations to fellow Nobel peace laureates like the Dalai Lama on behalf of the South African soccer officials who organized the conference.
Friday's peace conference was called to highlight the first World Cup to be held in Africa, which South Africa will host in 2010. It aimed to gather Nobel laureates, Hollywood celebrities and others to discuss issues ranging from racism to how sports can bring people and nations together.
Tutu and members of the Nobel Committee have now canceled plans to attend because the Dalai Lama was barred. "(South Africa) should admit anyone with a legitimate and peaceful interest and should not take political decisions on who should, and who should not, attend," de Klerk said in a statement Monday.
Masebe told the AP that the government made the decision last month. He said the Dalai Lama has been welcomed twice previously in South Africa, and would be welcome again in the future -- but "not now, when the whole world is looking at South Africa."
"We do value our relationship with China," Masebe said Monday.
South Africa is China's largest trading partner on the continent.
China claims Tibet as part of its territory, but many Tibetans say Chinese rule deprives them of religious freedom and autonomy. Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of pushing for Tibetan independence and fomenting anti-Chinese protests among Tibetans.
Beijing, an ally when South Africa's now-governing African National Congress was a liberation movement, and Pretoria have diplomatic ties stretching back a decade and an economic relationship based on trade as well as aid.
Samdhong Rinpoche, the prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, said South Africa was under pressure from Beijing and its decision to bar the Dalai Lama was a business matter. "South Africa is a newly emerging country and China is giving it considerable economic resources so it is understandable," he said Monday in Dharmsala, India. "We understand that every country has to protect its economic and political interests."
Masebe insisted that his government was not bowing to pressure from China. "We make our own decisions," he said.
Tamu Matose, a spokeswoman for Archbishop Tutu, told the AP that Tutu would not attend the conference "because of the Dalai Lama issue." Tutu was quoted Sunday as calling the barring "disgraceful."
Masebe said if organizers had talked with government officials before planning to include the Dalai Lama, they would have been advised to exclude him and the controversy could have been avoided.
But Kjetil Siem, chief executive officer of South Africa's Premier Soccer League, said the Dalai Lama was invited as a matter of course along with other laureates. "When it comes to peace conferences ... it has nothing to do with the government," Siem said.
Siem said the conference was a chance to show what South Africa has accomplished. Soccer was once as segregated as the rest of South African society, with four race-based leagues. Today, the nation is proudly united behind the upcoming World Cup.
The controversy over the Dalai Lama showed the peace conference was "more needed than ever," Siem said. Associated Press writers Ashwini Bhatia in Dharmsala and Malin Rising in Stockholm contributed to this report. There is always a silver lining. At least the Dalai Lama will not have to be concerned with having his bags stolen at Jan Smuts Oliver Reginald Tambo International Airport.
VDH in excellent form here. This is from a few days ago so my apologies if this was already posted (although I did a quick scan and it did not pop up). I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did. A little snippet to whet your appetite:
The Bush administration was further embarrassed when it boasted that the fundamentals of the economy were "sound" -- although in its prior requests for bailout funds just a few weeks ago, it had ridiculed skeptics who countered that the economy's fundamentals were, in fact, "strong." Meanwhile, columnist Frank Rich complained that "In times of economic crisis here we go again with greedy and failed AIG execs -- buddies of Bush's clueless Wall Street--retread treasury secretary -- using federal money to pay themselves bonuses for their rampant failure. But what do you expect from revolving-door administration officials in bed with the very corporations they used to work for? Get used to more $100-a-pound beef at the 'let them eat cake' White House parties, lorded over by this AIG surrogate who took more than $100,000 in their money for who knows what? Maybe Speaker Hastert can let those GM execs on federal welfare piggy-back on his private jet next time they come to Washington to beg for more of our money. These people have no shame."
President Bush had warned the American people that the present recession could last "for years," and that it was analogous to the Great Depression. Yet today, after passage of his new stimulus bill, his team suddenly reversed course, reassuring the nation that we might see an end of the recession by year's end. Then Bush himself berated the American people, charging that they had become too pessimistic about the economy. Veteran journalist Bill Moyers sniffed, "These right-wing mythographers seem just to make this stuff up as they go along."
When critics pointed out that the president had once promised an end to earmarks, and yet had signed more than 8,000 into law, he countered by promising not to do it again in 2010. Yet more trouble ensued when Bush increased the budget's red ink from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion -- after promising a new age of fiscal sobriety. "We inherited this recession from the Clinton administration," Bush countered, "and if we're going to offer real change, there is going to be some pain in order to get things right again. You have to borrow and spend to save and cut -- anyone knows that."
Dr. Gawande is a Boston physician who's written several great books. This article in the New Yorker explores the effects of prolonged isolation in imprisonment, the sort of imprisonment to which we subject the worst of the worst at Gitmo, the Supermax prisons, etc. Before you dismiss it and him, give it a read.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/23/2009 12:31 ||
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Importantly, during the Korean War, many US prisoners were put in overcrowded buildings where they had little or no personal space. A phenomenon was observed where some prisoners would cover their head with a cloth, find a corner, curl up and die. Autopsy showed severe internal organ degeneration, attributed to overcrowding stress.
So the US Army did extensive research on training soldiers how to be POWs. By the time of the Vietnam War, our prisoners were giving their Vietnamese guards nervous breakdowns. The secret was resistance in any way possible. Even though beaten and horribly tortured, this directive to resist maintained their morale and severely harmed enemy morale.
Soldiers forced to build their own prison camps put broken glass on the top of walls in patterns spelling out prisoner names, for US satellites to read. They said that the news of the US Moon landing almost caused some POW camps to collapse, as the Americans would point to the Moon and suggest that weapons would soon be launched from there to destroy Vietnam.
Guards were expending all their ammunition shooting at the Moon, in utter panic.
In recent years, in the US, one prisoner, a skilled martial artist, was put into solitary confinement, very ill advisedly, as he used his time to teach himself the esoteric "iron hand" techniques of the Wing Chun style.
In a few months of practice, he was able to use his fingers and hands as very lethal, short range weapons. For example, within a foot or two of him, with a single finger, he could punch a hole through someone's chest and into their lung, breaking through the ribs.
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This is the meme that prisons and jails create criminals. I guess that's another way to save money after gutting defense, close the prisons and jails and release the 'victims'.
After inflicting human and material losses on Pakhtuns and their cultural values, terrorists have now started hurting their sentiments by targeting the shrines of saints and national poets.
"Ma khu nade sok bewaja azaar kare, Da chay ma azarawee azaar da cha day," (I did not hurt anybody, then why people are out to hurt me without any reason), is a rhyme from the poetry of the great mystic poet Abdur Rahman, commonly known as Rahman Baba.
The barbarism that took place at Baba's mausoleum hangs like a question mark over the responsibilities of those at the helm of affairs.
On the other hand, the terrorists have alarmed the state of Pakistan once again about their intentions against the culture, as they did not even spare Sufis, who spread the message of love, peace and tolerance.
The perpetrators are not new. Call them religious extremists, Taliban, foreign militants or other elements; the people are now familiar with their acts and the ideology that they promote.
What else can one say after this coward practice of hitting the shrines of the saints, who widely preached Islam to get more people into the fold of religion than any other fact in the subcontinent?
The ill-omened Frontier province and tribal areas have witnessed widespread human and material losses that have left behind throbbing tales. Innocent people were killed and infrastructure destroyed. However, they have now started playing with people's sentiments by targetting shrines.
In his poetry, Rahman Baba says: 'Pa sabab da zalimano hakimano, Kor au gor au Pekhawar dray wara yo dee' (Because of the oppression of tyrants, my home, grave and Peshawar -- all the three are one).
Some people said that a large number of NWFP residents had started migrating to the Punjab, and they should also ponder shifting the graves of the saints to the Punjab.
"These terrorists are neither Muslims nor human beings. Such terrorists should be crushed as they did not even spare Baba, who is quite an undisputed person," stated an aged disciple of Baba, while sitting in the damaged shrine.
With his eyes welled-up, the bearded person cursed the terrorists for attacking Baba's shrine, and said such people should be hanged to death.
Born in 1632 AD at Deh Bahadur, a village about four kilometres south of Peshawar, Rahman Baba was called the Nightingale of Pakhtunkhwa.
His father, Abdul Sattar, was a peasant. Rahman Baba received early education from a local religious scholar, Mulla Muhammad Yousaf and adopted the life of privations, austerity and asceticism at the age of mere 20 years. He died in 1707 AD
Every April, fans of Rahman Baba hold a grand cultural festival at the shrine. Poets, writers and his fans from Pakhtun-inhabited areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan gather to celebrate the festival. This year the festival was scheduled for April 5.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/23/2009 00:00 ||
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Well, of course. To the Taliban, shrines are idolitry, and their prophet told them what to do about that.
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The money quote: "The idea is simple and not that radical. A US law banning OTC derivatives and moving them to regulated exchanges would end a colossal shadow banking fraud. Banks would not lose much more than already, but the world financial system would get back to normal. OTC derivatives are unregulated precisely to hide risk and enable fraud by the banks. It is past time to end that. There is where the US Treasury and other Governments must focus, not on meaningless transparency calls or trading bonus justice."
Congress is outraged. Really, really outraged. Unbelievably, incredibly outraged. And there are certainly grounds for anger.
Not at the insurance company American International Group, which paid bonuses that are seen as intolerable, but at Congress, which blithely declined to prohibit them but is now shocked to find AIG doing what it was allowed to do. The Democrats who control Capitol Hill want revenge, as do many Republicans. So the House voted 328-93 to impose a 90 percent tax on the payments.
In doing so, members resolutely avoided a couple of inconvenient realities. The first is that the fault, if any, lies with the same people who are now angry. The second is that the tax conflicts with the clear intent of the Constitution.
The pending fees were not exactly classified information. "AIG's plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored," reports The Associated Press. "A November SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] filing by the company details $469 million in 'retention payments' to keep prized employees."
In January, two House members urged the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to block such bonuses. Last month, the Senate passed an amendment outlawing such payments by companies getting federal bailout fundsand then dropped it.
The White House was also in the loop. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) says that the administration asked him to attach a provision to the stimulus bill that authorized such bonuses. Dodd protests that he only agreed because he didn't understand what the measure would do.
Maybe other people who voted for it in the Senate and House didn't either. Maybe Dodd and the rest ought to read legislation before they approve it.
But if members had any pangs of remorse for their failure, they stifled them in favor of vilifying AIG and its personnel. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) demanded the names of employees who "had to be bribed not to abandon the company." Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) urged that they be fired. Until these staffers can be publicly tarred and feathered, though, the House will settle for subjecting their bonuses to a 90 percent tax levyup from the normal maximum rate of 35 percent. Why not 100 percent? "State and local governments will take the extra 10 percent," said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.).
So the bill aims at sanctioning supposedly bad people by confiscating their earnings. As such, it sounds an awful lot like something the Constitution expressly forbidsa bill of attainder, which is a punishment of particular individuals imposed not by a court of law but by a legislative body.
Many if not most legal scholars believe this furious retribution can be structured to pass judicial review. But not Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor. "I am not so confident that it would pass constitutional muster," he told me. "While courts give Congress great discretion in the tax area, this would require a case of willful blindness."
Turley speaks with special authority on the subject because of a rare achievement: In 2003, he persuaded a federal appeals court that a law passed by Congress was a bill of attainder. That statute revoked a divorced father's visitation rights because his ex-wife claimed he had molested his daughtera charge that courts repeatedly rejected. But it was overturned because the court found the measure, though it didn't name him, was designed to place a severe burden on a specific person deemed to have done something terrible.
Ditto for this legislation. It's aimed at AIG employees who accepted payments guaranteed them by a legal contract, and it's intended to inflict pain to express disapproval of their conduct. Rangel, in fact, had earlier opposed the tax because it would be "punitive." But after voting for it, he explained that "we had very few weapons" to use against the recipients. Taxation as a weaponif that's not punitive, what is?
To uphold the tax, says Turley, "the courts would have to ignore the open statements of members of Congress. They have done everything short of burning the AIG executives in effigy on the House floor."
Maybe the people in Congress are smart enough to figure out a way to sneak this act of targeted revenge past the courts. Maybe, in other words, they have more brains than scruples. But so far, they haven't shown much of either.
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But it was overturned because the court found the measure, though it didn't name him, was designed to place a severe burden on a specific person deemed to have done something terrible.
Fine, it isn't directed specifically at one individual when we get the next Congress to retroactively tax 90% of all income of federal elected officials for the 2009-10 period. Works for me.
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First they came for his critics in Missouri and I said nothing. Then they came for Rush, Rick, Jim and Sean and I said nothing. Then they came for the gutter balling special olympian and I said nothing. Then they came for anyone making more than $75K and I said nothing. Then they came for me and it was too late.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
03/23/2009 13:23 Comments ||
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I don't know about the typical part. I haven't found an article laying out the problem this well before this one. I for one think that follow the money leads us from the late 90's to present fairly well. The revolution indicated may be more de facto that explicit, but it can't have escaped the notice of the GS types that their nests are feathered well by this situation.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/23/2009 9:08 Comments ||
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4 paragraphs on the amendments to the Glass Steagall Act of 1998 demonizing former Sen Gramm
not a word about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
Its like discussing problems in the Arab world, spending 5 paragraphs demonizing Bush and not mentioning the word "islam"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
